Celebrity birthdays today, Jan. 3; and Charles Schulz’s ‘Peanuts’ run ends

Americans lost a security blanket of sorts on this day in 2000, when St. Paul native Charles M. Schulz’s last original comic strip appeared in 2,600 newspapers. Schulz, then 77, had been diagnosed with colon cancer
and, after 50 years, ended his routine of drawing the strip — every frame and thought and dialogue bubble — seven days a week.
As he signed off that final time, he was quoted as saying, in the biography “Schulz and Peanuts,” by David Michaelis: “All of a sudden I thought, ‘You know, that poor kid (Charlie Brown, whom Schulz most wished he had grown up next to) never even got to kick the football. What a dirty trick. He never had a chance to kick the football.’”
“Sparky” died in his sleep a little more than a month later.
– Lisa Legge